Tobi Strikes Again
by lokilette
Summary: Deidara draws the short straw and is forced to travel with Tobi, but can he survive the endless barrage of questions and innocent insults?


**Disclaimer:** The characters belong to Masashi Kishimoto.

**Author's Note:** This is something I did for the "Pockie Ninja Funny Story Contest." I lost, but I sure had a lot of fun writing this, so that's a win, right? :)

The day was overbearingly warm, as if the sun was perched on the tree tops. Birds were chirping, small animals scurried around the underbrush, and somewhere a village was missing their idiot.

"Eh! Deidara-senpai!" Tobi shouted loud enough for the last syllable to hang over the forest. He rushed to catch up to his partner, who kept walking as if he was completely oblivious to the outburst.

"Senpai, you're not still mad at me for stopping at that shop, are you? Because I couldn't help it. They had dangos! And they were good dangos." Tobi stopped talking just long enough to imagine the tasty treats he had just finished. He wiped the drool from his face and raced to catch up to Deidara again.

"We can go back there, can't we, Senpai? Can we, can we, can we? I promise not to call your art forgery this time!" Tobi quipped cheerfully.

A small vein started to throb in Deidara's neck, and he stopped just long enough to snap, "My art is nothing like that pig!" before returning to walking.

"You're right, Senpai. Your art goes BOOM!" Tobi threw his hands out towards the sky to illustrate his point before laughing at the thought. "But," he continued, rubbing the bottom of his mask thoughtfully, "they do still look very similar."

"Tobi," Deidara warned through clenched teeth, the vein in his neck throbbing harder as his patience waned.

"Joking, joking," Tobi said with a nervous laugh. They walked through the trees silently for a few minutes, listening to the dull thud of their sandals in the dirt. It was almost like there was no one else alive in the calm serenity of the forest. It took no time at all for Tobi to realize he was bored.

"Senpai? What bijou are we looking for again? I forgot." Tobi entwined his fingers behind his head, resting it in his hands as he watched some birds circle in the sky above them.

"The Sanbi."

"Oh, that's right." Tobi let his arms fall to his side again as he lowered his gaze. "There's the Ichibi, Nibi, Sanbi," he listed them off, counting on his fingers as he went along, "Yonbi, Gobi, Rokubi, Shichibi, Hachibi, and Kyuubi, and I'm the Tobi. I'm the greatest catch of them all!" He laughed loudly with the realization, receiving only a small groan from Deidara in response.

Before too long, the pair approached a small pond in a clearing between the trees where the ground was softer and the vegetation was much more lush. Deidara barely noticed the change, but Tobi couldn't resist all the new opportunities this change of scenery posed.

"MUD!" he shouted and scampered over to an area near the water that was mushy from the moisture. Tobi squatted just over the spot and stuck his hands deep into the mud and squished it around in his fingers. He lifted a large glob of it and turned his back to Deidara while he pushed and prodded it.

"What are you doing?" Deidara sighed, stopping at the treeline to turn back only because it wouldn't look good if he showed up back at the Akatsuki base with the Sanbi and no Tobi. Unless he was dead. The thought had certainly crossed his mind countless times that day.

"Look! I made art like Senpai's!" Tobi lifted a large spider mud-blob into the air proudly and laughed.

"THAT LOOKS NOTHING LIKE MY ART!" Deidara exploded, sending Tobi scurrying behind a tree for cover. "Besides," he sighed, rubbing his temples as he spoke, "you can't just slap some mud together and call it art. Art is a bang. It's an explosion. It has a life of its own. The true beauty of art can't be understood or appreciated until that very finite moment when it is animated, and in that single, perfect moment that art becomes...What are you doing now?"

Tobi had been rifling through his pockets and finally drew out a single exploding tag. "Tobi gets it now," he said, slapping the tag onto the mud and smooshing it in. "Now Tobi can make real art just like Senpai!"

"TOOOOBBBBBIIIIIIIIII."

A loud BOOM shook the forest, follow by a flurry of birds taking to the air. Then, nothing but silence. Even in that silence, there was no question that by the end of this trip one of the two would end up dead.


End file.
